Between here and East Texas there are approximately 440 miles of asphalt equaling out to just under 7 hours of 70mph driving*. As a medical student and obsessive worrier it has never been easy for me to make the decision to leave town and now that the monster that is Step 1 has is hanging over my head it has become even more difficult. However, every year we look forward to an Easter road trip […]

With all the recent news coverage about Egypt and their revolution it’s sometimes easy to forget that there are people just like you over there still managing to live their day-to-day life, which is exactly why I was so excited to find @RaghdaElkattan on Twitter. Raghda is a 21 year old medical student from Maadi, Cairo and she is in her 5th year of medical study. As I’ve said in the past I am incredibly impressed […]

and pregnancy in highschool-ers is an epidemic! You hear people say it all the time, but do they really know what they’re talking about? Check out this chart I found today showing teen birth rates since the 1940s… Information & Image Courtesy of FamilyFacts.org …probably not what you expected, huh? It definitely took me by surprise. It seems like the dominant assumption in the US is that teen pregnancy rates are currently out of control. However, something […]

Today’s Medical Education Monday will be highlighting Spain’s medical education system and our guest blogger is Ines, a 19-year-old medical student from Madrid! I’d tell you how awesome her personal blog is, but I can’t read a single word that she’s written. Unlike the incredibly talented multilingual med students & doctors helping me with this series, I am completely lost if we aren’t all speaking Texan English, y’all. However, judging by her fabulously-written explanation of […]

A lot of my classmates have always known what they wanted to be when they grew up – some have been doctors for Halloween every October since they were 5, others took their first steps right through the middle of an OR without touching so much as a single sterile field. I, on the other hand, have been petrified of anything with a needle point or stethoscope since the precise moment when some evil […]

If you follow me on Twitter you are likely acutely aware of the outlandish amount of time I spend giving minute-by-minute updates on the painfully interesting things happening in my life (case in point), but what you may not realize is that Twitter is really quite useful for things other than boring the masses and keeping track of #trendingtopics. The microblogging site is also a great place to make connections with all different types of […]

Baby Jaden. Born 4/4/11 – 7lbs, 7oz. Adorable. I was about an hour into the three hour drive home from visiting one of my very best friends and her absolutely precious new baby boy, listening to Dr. Goljan explain Serous Ovarian Cystadenocarinoma through my car speakers and generally minding my own business when I saw flashing lights make an abrupt u-turn as I passed them. I silently willed the lights to transform into an ambulance. […]

I had the great honor of being a guest blogger over at Healthy, Unwealthy and Becoming Wise today. Head over there and show Erin some comment love – we want to hear where you derive your inspiration to do whatever it is that you do! Original Photo Courtesy of Neil Conway, Flickr Creative Commons. Tweet This Post

When I deployed my initial desperate plea for non-US medical students or doctors who were willing to help me out with this series @bramzo, a 2nd year medical student in Belgium, was the first to agree. He was excited about the series and wrote exquisitely about his interest in Neurosurgery, his experiences in the Belgian medical education system and what he has ahead of him in the next few years. When I read his interview and […]

I’m an Ob/Gyn resident (that means I went to medical school to become a doctor) and now I'm working like a crazy person to learn my trade before I'm on my own in the wild. Once upon a time I birthed a couple of babies of my own, they're friggin' adorable twin toddlers now. My life story through November 2010 can be viewed here. The events in the many years following can be summed up as wedding bells, books, exams, babies, and doctoring. I only started this blog in hopes of landing a role in a Lifetime movie so I could quit medicine and move to Hollywood, so if you wouldn't take medical advice from Angelina Jolie, you shouldn't take it from me. I may not even be a real person. In fact, I'm probably a spambot. Or possibly a 15 yo boy blogging from a dingy basement. If you're really interested you can read more about me here. If you have any questions or want to guest post contact me.